Ethernet is a widely field deployed protocol and often used for a very large variety of applications. Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) in recent years has become widely deployed and generally allows speeds of up to 1 Gb/sec. It is expected that speed increases will occur as time goes by.
Fibre Channel (FC) is generally a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) is a transport protocol which predominantly transports Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) commands over Fibre Channel networks. Fibre Channel products are available at 1 Gbit/s, 2 Gbit/s, 4 Gbit/s, 8 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s and 20 Gbit/s. The various Fibre Channel standards are generally interoperable and backward compatible. However, the higher speed standards (e.g., 10 Gbit/s, 20 Gbit/s) are less so or not backward compatible with any of the slower speed devices. Frequently, 10 Gb and 20 Gb Fibre Channel standards are primarily deployed as a high-speed “stacking” interconnect to link multiple switches.
Like reference symbols in the various drawings indicate like elements.